In the short story On the Rainy River, the main character, Tim O’Brien, has many defining traits. Although some of these characteristics are stronger than others, each one has an influence on his decisions throughout the story. Clearly, O’Brien’s main features which define his decisions and actions are cowardice and courage.
In the first paragraph of this story the author talks about the nature of courage and cowardice. He explains the possibility of building up courage by being a coward, like saving money in a bank; at a time of need, you would be able to withdraw the saved up courage to be used all at once. Throughout the story this theory was proven wrong when O’Brien did not have the courage to do what his moral beliefs told him was the right thing. He fell short of the price of being the hero of his youth; Tim O’Brien did not follow through with his plan of escaping the unjustified war by fleeing to Canada.
It takes courage to make a plan, to go against the beliefs of everyone around you, in order to follow your own moral beliefs and values. This is exactly what Tim O’Brien did in On the Rainy River. His courage let him make an effort towards escaping what he believed to be an unjustified war. Even though his beliefs about the war in Vietnam were contrary to most others’, he attempted heroism by driving to the Canadian border and trying to do what was right in his own mind. I am sure that it also took a lot of courage to finally share his story after many years of holding it inside his mind and dreams. O’Brien could have simply pushed the memory away, never telling his account, which in some ways may have been the easy way out, the cowardly thing to do. His courage let him finally admit his ultimate failure to dodge the draft in 1968.
Although there are many points to support Tim O’Brien’s courageous characteristic, I believe that there are even more grounds that support O’Brien’s cowardly nature. For instance, his embarrassment and worry about what other people will think about his decisions prevented him from being the hero who did the right thing in the end. When placed in a moral emergency, O’Brien stooped to his weakness, his cowardice. When Elroy took O’Brien out in a boat onto the Rainy River, giving him the perfect opportunity to be a hero, O’Brien realized that his cowardice would supersede his strong desire to be courageous. He suddenly knew that he would not be his own hero when he said, “right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do.” Tim O’Brien went to the war in Vietnam; he did not follow through with his escape plan; he took the easy way out. While sitting in that boat on the Rainy River, so close to heroism, O’Brien failed, his cowardice taking over while he hallucinated about the many consequences of fleeing his country. Despite his own moral values contradicting those of society, he could not bear the excruciating embarrassment that would result due to society’s view of draft-dodgers. Another reason that Tim O’Brien’s dominant trait is cowardice is that he took a very long time to finally share his story. For over 20 years, he was too embarrassed and mentally weak to admit that he was a failure in his own mind. The guilt infected his mind until he was almost forced to confess.
Tim O’Brien’s key character traits are courage and cowardice. In On the Rainy River, his cowardice definitely overpowered his courage. Although each of these characteristics played an important part in his decisions throughout the story, most of O’Brien’s choices were made due to his lack of courage than his bravery.
O'Brien, T. (2002). On the Rainy River. In Imprints (pp. 70-84). Toronto: Gage Learning Corporation.
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